Change the vertical spacing between “References” heading and bibliographic entries

Question

I am using BibTeX with the amsart class. Is there a way to decrease the vertical spacing between the "References" section heading and the bibliographic entries?

Answer 1

You can redefine the thebibliography environment to add a convenient vertical (negative) space; a little example in which I decrease the vertical spacing by 5pt (the line marked with % NEW):

\documentclass{amsart}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@article{test,
  title = "The title",
  author = "The Author",
  journal = "The Journal",
  year = "2012"}
\end{filecontents*}

\makeatletter
\renewenvironment{thebibliography}[1]{%
  \@xp\section\@xp*\@xp{\refname}%
  \normalfont\footnotesize\labelsep .5em\relax
  \renewcommand\theenumiv{\arabic{enumiv}}\let\p@enumiv\@empty
  \vspace*{-5pt}% NEW
  \list{\@biblabel{\theenumiv}}{\settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
    \leftmargin\labelwidth \advance\leftmargin\labelsep
    \usecounter{enumiv}}%
  \sloppy \clubpenalty\@M \widowpenalty\clubpenalty
  \sfcode`\.=\@m
}{%
  \def\@noitemerr{\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
  \endlist
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\cite{test}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

I would suggest you, however, not to decrease this spacing since doing so the heading and the first reference will appear too close.